The last time a Miami Heat team lost eight straight games was in 2008, when Erik Spoelstra was an assistant coach during Pat Riley’s last season. That season, the team was clearly aiming for a low finish.
This season, however, the Heat are not tanking.
After a difficult homestand where they lost all five games, followed by two road losses by a combined 55 points, the Heat are returning home for five more games, starting Wednesday against Detroit. Their season is on the edge, possibly even in worse shape than before.
Their latest loss, an 8th straight, was on Monday at New York. The final score was Knicks 116, Heat 95. Miami started strong with a 12-0 lead, but it didn’t last.
“We’re all getting tested — I said this before — including myself,” Spoelstra said after the game, which marked the longest losing streak of his career. “There’s no one that’s absolved from this. I have not come up with enough answers for this team. I have to do a better job. Our group has to do a better job.”
The Heat have now dropped to the No. 10 spot in the Eastern Conference, tied with No. 9 Chicago at 29-39, but the Bulls have the tiebreaker. The play-in tournament is their only realistic chance to make the playoffs. If they stay in 10th, they would need to win two road games just to earn the right to play against the No. 1 seed — probably Cleveland — in the first round.
This isn’t just a rough patch. It’s a breakdown. They can’t score, they can’t hold leads, and no one seems to have answers.
The Heat have been held under 100 points in three straight games for the first time since November 2018. They’re 10 games under .500 for the first time since the 2016-17 season, when they started 11-30 and then went 30-11 the rest of the way. On Monday, they gave up a 13-point lead, marking their 18th such loss this season, tying them with Utah for the most in the league.
How did they lose that 13-point lead? By allowing a 76-36 run.
“It’s frustrating,” Heat forward Jaime Jaquez Jr. said. “We’re going through the dark days right now.”
The Heat have lost 17 games when they were leading after the first quarter, the second-most such losses in the NBA. They’ve lost 11 games when they were leading going into the fourth quarter, tied for the most in the league. They’ve been outscored by 20 or more points in a quarter seven times this season, including once on Monday.
When things go wrong, they go very wrong for Miami.
“Anyone would just quit and get comfortable with losing and feel sorry for themselves,” Heat guard Tyler Herro said. “But obviously, nobody feels sorry for us. We have to dig ourselves out of this hole. It all starts in this locker room.”
These tough times for Miami are even harder than the issues they faced with Jimmy Butler’s suspensions in December, January, and February, before he was traded to Golden State for Andrew Wiggins. Back then, the Heat were still winning about half of their games. Butler missed 19 games due to injury or suspension between December 21 and February 5, and the Heat went 10-9 in those games.
Andrew Wiggins looks at the scoreboard (NBA)Since the trade, in the 19 games they’ve played, they’re 4-15
“We’re trying to play the right way,” Heat captain Bam Adebayo said. “Spo wants us to play the right way. So, we’re going to keep competing.”
There have been other issues besides what shows up in the box score. Wiggins has been in and out of the lineup due to injuries, Nikola Jovic, who was becoming an important part of the rotation, is out with a broken hand, and Miami has used nine different starting lineups in its last 11 games.
“This has been one of the biggest challenges of a regular season that I’ve been a part of,” Spoelstra said. “And we just have to stay the course. This is the NBA. We’ll have another game on Wednesday night. We have to collectively get our mind right where all these losses don’t have to impact the next game.
That is the mental discipline. That is a tough human condition to fight. It’s human nature to stack up some of these memories and let that affect us for the next game.”
One of the NBA’s biggest success stories this season — will be waiting. Houston is coming to the Heat on Friday, and Charlotte will play them on Sunday. On March 25, Butler and Golden State will visit, and then on March 27, Atlanta, a team Miami is fighting for play-in positioning, will close out the homestand.
This will be the next stretch. It won’t be easy. These days, nothing comes easy for Miami. A team that starts each season with hopes of a championship now faces a tough challenge just to make the playoffs.
“Is it easy? No. But you have a chance in this league,” Spoelstra said. “That’s the beauty of this league. You have opportunities to develop your grit, to reveal your grit, to reveal your competitive character, to collectively develop it together and you do that through really tough experiences. And we’re going through it right now.”
